Page 27 of Saved By the Alien Hybrid
“Nothing yet.”
She huffed, dragging a wispy strand of hair out of her eyes as a gentle breeze stirred through the forest. Her cheeks and nose were flushed with color, and her eyes were brighter. Her gazeflicked upward as a tiny malepulucalled to its mate somewhere in the boughs above.
Rentir had never spent much time in the forest. He’d been assigned to protection detail, mostly guarding the overseers’ facilities. From time to time, he’d been sent on assignment into the mines to reinforce security as the Aurillon dealt with a ‘problem’ worker. Shame curdled his mood further.
What would she think of him when she learned what his role was in all of it? She’d been quick to state her support of the rebellion. Would she still smile at him? Still be willing to have him at her back?
His tail wrapped around his thigh and squeezed. He busied himself checking over his loadout, hands patting his blaster on his right hip and the plasma blade strapped to his left thigh.
“What was it like?” Cordelia asked suddenly, her voice thin and winded. She looked at him over her shoulder as she climbed over a jutting silver root. “Growing up as a hybrid? How did they raise you?”
He thought about it for a moment before answering.
“We are raised in batches, usually a group of twenty to forty younglings at a time. There’s usually six rotations between each batch, so there are never too many of us in the same stage of development at once. We have caretakers, one per group of ten young, that meet our needs from infancy to just before puberty. By that point, we’re expected to be self-sufficient.”
The look on Cordelia’s face was distinctly disapproving, but she gestured for him to go on.
“When we reach puberty, we expand upon our general education into specialized courses based upon what role we’ve been bred for.” He felt oddly defensive about how cold it all sounded. “We sometimes bond with one another, though we’re discouraged from forming attachments. It makes it harder whenthe time comes for the batch to separate into their assigned roles.”
She stayed silent, leaving room for him to expand. A female pulu above them sang an answering song to her mate. The male swooped overhead to greet her in a blur of long, fluttering white feathers, briefly distracting them both.
“Haerune was one of my batch,” he said. She looked surprised by that. “We slept side by side in the dorms for sixteen years. They tried to discourage our friendship, but… I could not overcome my affection.”
“Good,” she said.
When he looked askance at her, she only smiled, flashing those small, flat teeth. He stumbled over a rock, nearly hitting his knees as he caught himself with a reedy sapling that bent under his weight. She laughed, and the sound was so beautiful that he was prepared to throw himself over the next protrusion he saw just to hear it again.
“Let’s take a minute,” she said, pressing her back against a tree and sliding down to the ground until she was cradled by its roots. “I need to catch my breath. We’ve been hiking for an hour.”
He perched on a shelf of rock opposite to her, pulling one leg up to rest his chin on his knee.
“What was your youth like?” he asked. “How are humans raised?”
Her throat worked as she guzzled water from her canteen. She lowered her canteen to take a gasp of air, her eyes going heavy-lidded. “Guess it depends who does the raising,” she mused. “I grew up in a trailer park. My mom was a teacher, and my dad took off on her when he found out she was pregnant. We were so broke that sometimes my mom would have sleep for dinner, but I never went without. She busted her ass to make sure I could study my way into a better life.”
“She sounds devoted.”
He couldn’t imagine what having a parent felt like. His caregiver, an auretian male who they referred to only as “Mentor”, had been perfunctory in his duties. He’d given them only as much affection as was required for their mental development, without much sincerity.
“She was.” Cordelia’s face fell, her gaze going distant. “I guess I’ll never see her again. As long as we traveled to get here… she probably died a long time ago.” She sniffed hard, rubbing her sleeve beneath her nose.
“I’m sorry,” he told her.
Her sadness pained him,actuallypained him. It was an ache in his chest that gnawed at his heart, commanding him to fix it, to make her smile again. Only he didn’t know how to do that.
“It’s alright. I mean, it isn’t, but… We were planning for a twenty-year trip, anyway. I always knew there was a chance she wouldn’t be there when I got back. I didn’t leave any regrets between us.”
A silence fell between them.
“I am part human,” he announced suddenly, hoping to reengage her. He wanted to hear more of her strange, beautiful voice.
Her brows nearly touched her hairline. “No shit?”
“I’m sorry?”
“I mean, you’re serious?”
“Ah, I see. No, there is no shit. Haerune sequenced your DNA when you were healing. It appears the Aurillon made contact with your people at some point. They integrate genes into their hybrids from all sentient species they come across.”
